Israel to Implant 9-Storey Ultra-Orthodox Seminary in Palestinian East Jerusalem

Jerusalem’s planning committee moved forwards on Wednesday with plans to build a nine-storey Jewish seminary in the heart of a densely-populated Palestinian neighbourhood near the Old City. Plans for the new tower block, to be built in the Sheikh Jarrah…

This post was republished using Repost. Please read it on Informed Comment directly: http://www.juancole.com/2014/02/orthodox-palestinian-jerusalem.html

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16 Responses

The Palestinians should take a page off the illegal settlers books, and start price tag attacks on this building. This in your face move by Israel, is disgusting, and it seems they are taking advantage of the helplessness of their victims, the Palestinians. This military occupation has been going on for too long, and to keep thumbing it’s nose at the world at a time when the US is trying to negotiate peace between the two people, is yet again, the arrogance Israel has shown the world.

It’s important to note that this is a yeshiva for English-speaking youth. That is, American Zionist extremists whose main motivation is likely to be formenting trouble in the neighborhood., like they already have in Sheikh Jarrah.

Jerusalem is already full of yeshivas for people with real religious motivation to study there.

Jerusalem is one of the great cities of the world, but when you visit it you can see that apart from some myths it really has very little heritage that can be called Jewish. It is mainly the product of a few centuries of Christian buildings and monuments and over 1200 years of Islamic legacy. Its historic character is being steadily destroyed as the result of a large number of ugly and uniform settlements that are built all round of the city. Building a nine-storey building in such a historic city, even if legal, would be wrong and in very bad taste. I believe the UNESCO should be asked to intervene and preserve the historic legacy of that unique city until its fate is finally decided as the result of a final settlement.

To take a page from the settlers’ book the Palestinians would have to be individually armed as were 18th Century militiamen. They would also have to be protected by a standing army and police. But as you say, they are helpless. They can only be assisted from the outside, most particularly under the leadership of the United States. But the U.S., under far greater political pressure than is Israel, remains at the stage where even civilian boycotts must be labeled as “unhelpful.” And this, as if the application of any pressure at all on Israel were out of the question given the ferocity of her Lobby.

In the words of Ilan Pappe, the Palestinians have been reduced to the status of “hostile aliens in their own homeland.” (‘The Forgotten Palestinians’)

“Price tag” attacks have been acts of violence carried out by Jewish settlers in retaliation for the curtailment of their settlement enterprises.

They traditionally have targeted Arabs, but they have also have retaliated against Israei security forces that have interfered with their interests. They often spray paint “price tag” at the site of their attacks.

“never recognised by the international community.” but the USA helps and encourages the illegal acts and the EU is nearly as bad.
This is an extremely provocative move, and each time less is left for the “Palestinian State” that is now not even allowed to be mentioned (see articles on Gazans needing medical care in israel or WB).

To your point, today a young Palestinian man was shot by the IDF, and another injured. His crime? Collecting gravel near a border fence. Many Palestinians, including unarmed teenagers have been killed in these meaningless border killings. It seems the mighty IDF is afraid of these unarmed civilians, and plays God by choosing who must be killed, and justifies the killing by calling them suspicious, and perhaps terrorists. Unfortunately, the American media keeps quiet about these on going murders, never mentioned, for the American people must keep believing the violence is always one sided – from the Palestinians only.
It seems the rest of the world is fully aware of Israel’s crimes against unarmed civilians, because unlike the US, they deem it one of the most disliked nations in the world, for good reason.

One wonders why the Palestinian Authority sits by idly and does not use their newfangled “observer status” at the United Nations to commence a war crimes proceeding in the International Criminal Court for this blatant violation of the Geneva Convention.

A “price tag attack” is an act of terrorism or property damage committed by an Israeli settler, usually against Palestinian property such as a mosque, Palestinian home or even an automobile, supposedly in response to an “unfriendly” action of the Israeli government.

I remeber when resistance to the United States and Israel was lead by organizations inspired not by by the Quran but by the Manifesto. I get the impression that reminding people of that today is illegal because no one wants to be reminded of that.

It’s silly to even point out all the bits and pieces of what this all means “in human terms” to the Palestinians. But just for context, it appears “settlers,” as their models in South Africa did, are happy to enserf Palestinians, virtually steal their labor, including children — all “undocumented” except by a few journalists who can still care. “Palestinian Children: The Invisible Workers of Israeli Settlements.” link to thedailybeast.com, and among many other articles, “Tile by tile, Palestinians build Israeli settlements,” link to globalpost.com .

There might be a start at some push-back, BDS-style, some revulsion at the idiocy, and some recognition that just because the Likudniks’ self-history is one of conquest and displacement by violence and trickery, as laid out in the Pentateuch, that doesn’t oblige the rest of the world to let their little vision keep lighting fuses on so many bombs that explode elsewhere.

Not that the kind of people that dominate the Palestinians from their own ranks, politically and economically, care a fig or an olive about their slaving, suffering masses, when there’s a buck to be made off them. Arafat and Abbas and quite a number of “businessmen” seem to be doing just fine with the status declining quo.

But then in this world, headed for a human-induced apocalypse, Praise Ye The Lord!, decency and comity and kindness and what used to be called righteousness have neither currency nor value. Maybe we’ve reached that critical mass, where enough people addicted to greed and power and self-pleasing have risen to the top that the rest of us know in our sad little hearts that resistance is futile…